A Guy’s Techdirt Comments

To anyone whom felt disrespected by anything I may have said on this board:

I was only expressing my own opinion. I respect the laws and decisions made by our lawmakers, captains of industry and the difficult positions they are often in. My opinions were heartfelt, but they were just my opinions. Perhaps sometimes it's better to keep ones opinions to themselves. I certainly meant no disrespect and deeply apologize if my opinions were taken as disrespectful.

Sometimes it's easy to step over the line when you perceive you're acting alone in a private setting.

Re: Re: Re: Sadly Reckrul, you are the article...

I don't think we should all arm ourselves with assault rifles or carry around a gun with us at all times. However, if someone is intent on doing something horrible, the fact is there are a lot of assault rifles in public hands and available for purchase.

Morality only works on fundamentally moral people. Beyond that, the supply and demand situation could probably allow monsters to acquire guns for a very long time into the future.

Re: Sadly Reckrul, you are the article...

We are already armed en mass. At least a quarter of all Americans are gun owners, probably more. That is a massive supply of publicly owned guns.

As far as early intervention with the mentally ill, how do you propose that's possible? Is a bureaucrat going to decide when a person goes from depressed to not depressed? Could a bureaucrat tell the difference between a schizophrenic and a slob with a really bad back? The warning signs are exactly the same.

If history has taught us anything, it's that evil people will do evil things, both in and out of government, no matter what the laws are. Untrained and irresponsible people will do irresponsible things no matter what the laws are. The best we can hope for is to take responsibility for ourselves.

Streisand Effect

Most of what I objected to about SOPA was increasing the deficit in an unworkable attempt to censor the internet. Sometimes increasing the deficit may be necessary but it's not generally a good idea. Censoring the internet using the SOPA method was impossible anyway.

It seemed like they were attempting to flush money down the toilet with no foreseeable benefit to anyone.

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The real problem is people who are evaluating the options are committing the cardinal economic sin of using sunk costs to justify their policies.

Their logic is "It would cost too much to replace the infrastructure, so let's just use less and less efficient sources of the same fuel instead of making the necessary infrastructure improvements to make other options profitable."

It's not that shale oil is better than the renewable options, it's that we don't have an infrastructure to recharge our transportation system with renewable sources.

This, and lots of lobbying money, will contribute to a deflationary cycle in the energy markets until their is political will to fix the actual problem.

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I'm torn over fusion. When burning oil, at least the rest of the life on the earth that we depend on to survive wasn't using it. Is it really a good idea to start turning our water into heavier elements?

It doesn't really matter in the end. If we figure it out, I'm sure we'll do it anyway.

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Relativity says you cannot run time back to the instant of creation. QM helps explain what happens in a singularity, like the big bang. Right now relativity and QM don't agree with each other, so our understanding of the universe is imperfect.

As for God, don't look to science for proof of its existence or lack thereof. You won't find a meaningful answer. Science studies the how of creation, it cannot prove or disprove the existence of a creator.

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Our understanding of QM is not perfect yet. My understanding is less perfect than others, but it's an interest.

Energy is infinite. Differences in energy may coalesce into matter. The crux of it is that empty space is inherently unstable. Virtual particles pop into and out of existence randomly. Given the right (unknown) circumstances, a huge wave of energy could be released from empty space creating a universe and matter with it. That's the QM view of the big bang as I understand it.

Anyway, creating matter seems to have happened at least once before. I'd like to thing we could maybe one day recreate something similar on a smaller scale to power our society, but right now that's more in the realm of science fiction than anything else.

Well, I predict that about another 70 millionish people will become interested in the anti-censorship movement now (maybe half the Russian population). That kind of support could drive a lot of innovation.

Re: Libertarianism Is Misunderstood

However, I do agree that education is woefully lacking in this country. For some reason, we cannot even agree that we need to teach basic math and science to our voters and expect some proficiency from our business leaders, and politicians.

Libertarianism Is Misunderstood

Libertarianism is the opposite of fascism. There are right, left and center libertarians, just like there are right left and center fascists.

For some reason, people seem to believe that all libertarians believe in the republican party. Perhaps that's due to Ron Paul being the most prominent one politically currently. When Ralph Nader was the most prominent libertarian, we were all tree hugging liberals.

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I'm guessing they have some sort of agreement with the Russians not to provide military equipment to the rebels. Is there a defense pact in place that could launch us into a larger conflict? That's just conjecture of course. I don't really know.